Plasma's Folder View already does this, and it's very logical and humane: with single click, you need the selection markers; with double click, you don't, so determine their presence programmatically. This patch adds the same feature to Dolphin.
FEATURE: 392788
FIXED-IN: 18.08.0
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This breaks selecting multiple files without Ctrl, i.e. for every user not knowing about the modifier and for everyone simply not wanting to (or being able to) use both hands.
Can we hide the hover overlays only if the selection is empty? Probably, but it would result in an interface which is quite inconsistent in its behaviour.
(Note that this is only about the default, those not wanting the overlay could still disable it manually.)
Edit: It's even a -2 from me (sorry for that), because you remove the feature completely, even though single-click users might want to disable the marker too.
All this patch does is bring to Dolphin the behavior that Folder view has. Maybe the reverse should happen, but the inconsistency is a problem.
I'd say the use cases are slightly different, because it is certainly one of the primary functions of a file manager to be able to select multiple files, while the same cannot be assumed necessarily for the folder view. But yeah, in principle I'd favour bringing this back (or making it configurable / respect Dolphin's setting) for folder view too.
From a normal user's perspective, there's no distinction between files and folders on the desktop and files and folders in Dolphin.
Since it gets uses outside of Dolphin, it almost seems like the better place for this setting is alongside the single click/double-click one, rather than in Dolphin.
What's the story here for users of other desktops? Does Dolphin respect some kind of generic double-click setting in Qt or elsewhere (which Systemsettings sets for Plasma users), or is this all directly dependent on Plasma's Systemsettings? Depending on that, moving the marker option out of Dolphin would cut off Dolphin users from other desktops.
Other desktops use double-click as the selection/opening behavior and have no option to add selection markers (except for Windows which does have that option, I believe). So Dolphin would actually be more consistent with other platforms.
I'm talking about the user's mental model not the current state of affairs. Also, opening a folder in Folder view just opens Dolphin by default, so I'm not sure what difference you're referring to? Maybe the drag-and-hover behavior?
Your patch is too imbalanced: You gain a checkbox which effectively results in Dolphin working like macOS Finder with a single switch (instead of with two switches to toggle like right now), but at the same time you regress in usability and functionality over the existing state of both KDE and Windows. Double-click users cannot turn on the markers anymore, and single-click users won't be able to turn them off.
Only to save users of a non-default option one extra step you make workflows of other users totally impossible. At least to me that's not a good incentive to accept the patch.
But if you change the setting to double-click, they become useless annoyances: clicking anywhere on an icon selects it, so there's no need for a tiny hover button in the corner to provide this feature.
No they are not annoyances, because they provide an essential role to make selecting multiple items easier. If we'd followed your arguments, we'd have to remove the markers altogether, because for single-click you could just use Ctrl like you are proposing for double-click. Don't forget that selecting a single item has no value on its own, because right-clicking to open the context menu will already select the item if it isn't selected, for drag-and-drop a pre-existing selection is no prerequisite too, and for the information panel hovering is enough.
The important case the selection-marker is needed for is for multi-selection, and thus absolutely independent of the number of clicks. Therefore binding those markers to the click behaviour is wrong. As said elsewhere, improving the hover marker in appearance and functionality could be worthwhile, but simply removing it everywhere is the worst of all options.
Maybe users e.g. on XFCE specifically chose Dolphin to have the markers, because their default file manager does not have them. Now you are saying they are not allowed to have the markers anymore, because they chose the wrong desktop…
I'm talking about the user's mental model not the current state of affairs. Also, opening a folder in Folder view just opens Dolphin by default, so I'm not sure what difference you're referring to? Maybe the drag-and-hover behavior?
Exactly, you cannot "open" a folder on the desktop, it will launch an external app instead. IOW, "total" consistency regarding the marker behaviour is not needed, because there are already many differences between how folder view and Dolphin behave.
@ngraham Sorry for the negativity. I hope you see my arguments as purely on-topic and not against you personally. I also thought for quite a bit on how to make this "click here to make it behave in a certain way" you want easier, but in this case there isn't really a good option. The extra toggle in Dolphin (and Gwenview) is likely just the best way…
I also don't see the problem of double click + selection markers and I don't understand why Folder View doesn't show them.